This little story by Lev Tolstoy is about patience, creativity, and emotional intelligence — the ability to stay calm, think clearly, and find a smart solution instead of giving up 💪

«Stories & Mind»

А little story  — “The Jackdaw and the Pitcher.”

One more tones practice , let's learn together.

wai1        wai2     wai3       wai4           wai5        wai6
威             位          喂           围                伟             卫
power     seat      feed      surround   great        guard

jau1             jau2        jau3     jau4       jau5       jau6
优                 油           幼         游           有           又
excellent    petrol    kid        swim     have      again

seoi1     seoi2     seoi3      seoi4      seoi5      seoi6 
需          水           税            谁            绪             睡
need     water    tax         who       mood       sleep


Easy  Cantonese 

Take easy to learn about tones of Cantonese (2)

Привет! 🤗

В этом выпуске подкаста мы поговорим о таком празднике, как «День славянской письменности и культуры».

Приятного прослушивания!

Speak fluent Russian B1-B2

🎧 Выпуск 51. День славянской письменности и культуры

In this episode, we shift our focus to neutral nouns in Ukrainian and how to form their plural endings! We’ll break down the most common patterns, explain how hard and soft stems influence these changes, and provide simple tips to help you master plural formation.

Grammar bits in Ukrainian

Mastering Ukrainian Plurals: Neutral nouns in plural

PATTY: I’m really excited for Aunt Mary’s surprise birthday party
this afternoon! Aren’t you?
SUSAN: Yeah! How old is she?
PATTY:  She’ll be 55 on May 14 [fourteenth].
SUSAN: Wow! I didn’t know that my mom was older — she’s going
to be 57 on September 2 [second]. Anyway, Aunt Mary’s 
going to be so surprised to see us all here!
PATTY: I know! But we still have to get all the food set up before 
she gets here … OK! We’re all ready now. Shh! She’s here!
ALL: Surprise!


LANGUAGE NOTES
• I’m really excited … Notice the emphasis on “really.” “Really” is used to emphasize the 
adjective “excited” here.
• Birthday party Notice that the normal stress for a compound noun falls on the first 
element of the compound.
• Aren’t you? This negative tag is used to show that the speaker expects a positive 
answer. Patty assumes that Susan is also looking forward to the party.
• She’ll be 55 Notice that “55” is stressed here. This detail answers the question “How 
old is she?”
• Fourteenth Notice that we use “th” for ordinal numbers, starting with 4 [but first, 
second and third]. The stress is on the second syllable [fourTEENTH]. Compare this with 
“fortieth: 40th” [FORtieth].
• She’s going to be ... Notice how this is pronounced like “gonna be.” Instead of four 
syllables “go/ing/to/be” there are three syllables “ga/na/be.”

English Conversation practice (30-day challenge)

Day 20: Birthdays

l'olio, i verbi 2osservare, guardare, vedere", un libro, un film, un cinema speciale.....

la Rubrica di Simona

🍁L'AUTUNNO DELLA RUBRICA🍁

There are many types of dairy alternatives on the market today, often made from things like nuts and soybeans.

But have you heard they're now making butter from air?

A US startup called Savor is working on a range of dairy alternatives made using something that exists all around us: carbon.

Fats are made from chains of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen atoms. Savor's process involves taking carbon — from, say, carbon dioxide — and adding heat and hydrogen to create chains that are combined with oxygen from air.

This results in fat molecules, like the ones found in dairy and other animal products.

Now, regular butter is about 80% fat — the rest is mostly water. So to make butter from its synthetic fat, Savor just adds water, as well as an emulsifier that keeps the liquids from separating, and rosemary oil for flavor and beta carotene for color.

What does it taste like?

"I couldn't believe I wasn't eating real butter," Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates wrote in a blog post earlier this year. Gates is one of Savor's investors.

He wrote that "it tastes really good — like the real thing, because chemically it is."

Savor has already run informal taste tests with small groups of people, and is working to get regulatory approval for its product in the US.

But why butter?

A 2021 study estimated that food production makes up about 35% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions — and Savor estimates that about 7% of greenhouse gas emissions are just from producing fat.

But Savor's process, Gates wrote, doesn't release any greenhouse gases. He added that it uses no farmland and "less than a thousandth of the water that traditional agriculture does."

Savor is focusing on butter to start with partly because its high price point makes it easier to compete on cost. But the startup later hopes to develop other products like milk, ice cream, cheese — even meat.





Practice Listening, Reading & Comprehension

US Startup Makes Butter from Carbon Dioxide

We live in a world of rules. We see them everywhere when we travel by plane. No liquids! Wait here! Turn off your phones!

But what about those unspoken rules — the ones that aren't written down and no one is exactly sure about.

A travel expert from the US has been explaining her unspoken rules for the airplane journey.

TV host Samantha Brown shared her rules with CNN, including one that makes the middle seat feel a little more comfortable.

According to Brown, if you find yourself in one of the middle seats on a plane, you should get both of the armrests to yourself.

Sitting in the middle isn't always very popular and so Brown says these passengers should get "anything they want."

That means even if the people on the outside begin using those armrests, the person in the middle has the right to "slowly push them off!"

Brown says she likes the aisle seat best because she feels she has more space.

She added that people sitting by the window should have control of the window blind — whether it's up or down. And the others don't have the right to decide!

One thing that can make some passengers angry is people in front putting their seats back.

Brown has a rule for this — if the journey takes less than three hours, she doesn't put her seat back, but she does if it's a longer trip.

Expert Shares the 'Unspoken Rules' of Plane Trips

What is the BBC and is it really operated by the government?